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News analysis We can send probes to the fringes of the solar system. Swap instant messages with friends on the other side of the world. So surely we have some hi-tech help for the hundreds of thousands of people in Burma and China. Right?

The short, sad answer is 'no'. In the early 21st century, disaster relief bears a remarkable similarity to that of the mid-20th century, and even before.

"I used to be an aid worker in Mozambique, back in the 80s," says Oxfam's Ian Bray.

"I had to travel all the way from Mozambique to Harare, all day in a Land Rover, just to send a telex back to my operations here in Oxford. Now I can quickly phone our people. That's how technology has helped us.

"But the basics remain the same. People still need food, they need clean water and sanitation, they need something as mundane as soap and buckets to wash their hands after defecation to break the cycle of disease. You can't email that to them."

Trucks or boats, laden with sacks of rice, blankets, material for shelter and other big items, remain the method of choice for getting help to remote parts of cyclone-ravaged Burma and quake-hit Sichuan, says Bray.

Air transport may be faster, "but it's a very ineffective and very expensive way of delivering aid", he says.

Helicopters can only carry small payloads, and dropping food from aircraft may cause a scramble among refugees that benefits only the strong and the fit.

Tough and reliable

In addition, relief equipment, such as water purifying machines and medical gear, has to be simple and rugged, able to resist extremes of temperature, humidity and rough transport, and be operated by local people.

So a fancy scanner that works fine in a hospital in Surrey or California with the help of a university-educated engineer is clearly out of the question.

As for emergency shelter, the smartest aid, the kind that is easiest and quickest to assemble and gives best value for money, is the simplest, says Graham Saunders of the International Federation of the Red Cross.

"A lightweight tent costs US$265, but a shelter kit, comprising a roll of plastic sheeting, a bag of tools and some fixings, costs just US$60," he says.

Emergency food

For food, nutritionists have developed high-protein biscuits and a peanut-based substitute called Plumpynut as ready-to-use, wrapped food in disasters.

These are among the palette of therapeutic options for badly malnourished survivors.

But for most people, a food that is familiar, acceptable and easily digestible is the main requirement, which is why rice is the staple of choice.

Saunders recalls a mission in Afghanistan where he found that US military rations - meals ready-to-eat, or MREs - had been used by the locals as bricks to fill in road potholes.

Nobody had explained that the strange, plastic-wrapped packages contained food.

Searching for survivors

In the Chinese earthquake, the search for survivors under the rubble will entail a mixture of technology, sniffer dogs and experience in knowing where a collapsed building may provide a survival space, says Julie Ryan of the UK charity International Rescue Corp.

The tools include a tried-and-trusted system of microphones set on the rubble to pick up sounds from a survivor and triangulate his or her position. A Scubar, a camera on a flexible pole, can also be fed into the rubble.

A recent innovation is a device called a carbon dioxide analyser, says Ryan.

"If you are unconscious and in a confined space, the level of CO2 in that space will rise."

Still in prototype phase is a ground radar system, which sends a signal through rubble to locate voids and, with luck, pinpoint a survivor's heartbeat.

Even further down the track, in experiments conducted by US military scientists, are rats trained to find people and send back a radio signal via a brain implant to give their location.